Thursday, April 3, 2014

The Mystery of Eden, A Benefit Auction

Meridian Magazine and I are auctioning 6 Paintings that celebrate the Temple and the Garden of God. 100% of the proceeds from the paintings will support the "Celebration of Marriage."You can place a bid by emailing me (queenmary.summerhays@gmail.com) your full name, contact info, name of the piece and the bid amount. Bid increments must increase at least $25. I’ll notify you by email each time you’re outbid. The auction will end at 9pm MST on Friday, April 18th.Below the pictures you can read a description of the meaning behind the images.

From the Egyptian Isle of Embracing, to the Asian Kunlun Mountain, every culture in every age has told the story of the garden; the paradise where men and women unite to create life and love. No matter what our origins, this foundational story, upon which cultures rise and fall, reminds each of us, of the interplay between life, and love, and the promise of Eternal Life in the “Garden of God.”

Each of these diverse garden stories have defining significance for the cultures that they inspire. As Latter-day Saints we turn to the temple to see the Judeo Christian paradigm story in it’s purest clarity. As one LDS temple sealer explained the Eden story, “That there might be no question as to its nature and purpose God himself performed earth’s first marriage uniting the man Adam and the woman Eve as ‘one flesh’ in a union that was to be as Eternal as God himself. It was in that sacred ceremony that the command was given that they multiply and replenish the earth.”

In attempting to understand that sacred ceremony, we can find no better setting than a garden, since God describes the glory of the New and Everlasting Covenant as “a continuation of theseeds forever and ever.” (D&C 132:19) God had earlier described his intent and purpose in creating this first man and woman by saying, “We will cause them to be fruitful and multiply” (Abraham 4:28) It was only woman that could give Adam that “fruit.” Only that beguiling gift, both fatal and fruitful, would fulfill the New and Everlasting Covenant, achieving the ideal that their seeds “continue.”

Because of Eve’s power to create life, Adam’s posterity would live on the earth long after his death, making Adam eternal. Eve created a fruitful line of Fathers and Mothers that would literally “continue” throughout “all generations of time.”

Yet the covenantal promise was to achieve eternity in two different spheres: “both in the world and out of the world should they continue as innumerable as the stars.”

Only Sealing power would give their children Eternal Life, or life after death. Just as Eve gave Adam eternal life through childbearing, Adam, using the priesthood, gave Eve and her children Eternal Life through the ordinances of the gospel. Only together, acting as one flesh, could they achieve all that was intended by the Eternal Father.

In uniting the “Father of Many,” and the “Mother of All Living,” God defined the need for relationships, the sealing ordinances, the function of the priesthood, and our divine inheritance as sons and daughters of God.

Our temples recreate this divine setting where we may gather to Eden, following the pattern established by the Eternal Father; to be sealed in family units, every child tied to his mother and

father, preserving the garden of humanity, beneath the boughs of the Tree of Life.

Adam and Eve’s lives were defined by their origin and gender in Eden and the promise to pass cherubim and a flaming sword in order to again commune with their Father. This setting illustrated the sealing power and it’s significance in the lives of the human family, as we “weld” families together, sealing each of us to a birthright that is both divine and biological- A married mother and a father, bound in a new and everlasting covenant.

Adam’s desire to return to the place where he walked and talked with God in the cool of the evening could not be restrained from his children—grandchildren of paradise. The scriptures describe our first parents making “all things known unto their sons and their daughters” (Moses 5:12). Of course, the first high priest taught them to return to the temple to be sealed. Would Adam invent an alternative to the pattern God established in the garden?

This paradigm story reveals our divine relationships not only between man and wife, but also what it means to be parent and child. It reveals what we inherit as children of God, and what part of that birthright that we pass on to our children. It is a powerful identity we can only discover in the garden of God—as we embrace those we love in the pattern that was established in Eden; A pattern that creates both Eternal life, and eternal lives, two different gifts that combine to create the fruitful continuance designed in Eden, the garden of God.